Dr Makarena Diana Dudley was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to people with dementia.
Dr Makarena Diana Dudley Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to people with dementia, particularly Māori
From humble beginnings in a small Far North community to becoming a world-leading researcher, Dr Makarena Dudley (Te Rarawa, Ngāti Kahu) has always strived to be a role model for young Māori.
She aims to inspire young people in Awanui and beyond.
“I come from an incredibly poor background. My father was a cleaner and my mum worked various jobs.
“Education was never on their radar, it was to leave school, get a job and help the family,” Dudley said.
“But I didn’t want to leave school, I loved it.”
Because of her family life, she left school in her youth. But her love for learning called, and in her 40s she returned and studied psychology.
One of her key contributions is the establishment of a conceptual framework to better understand dementia from a Māori perspective.
Dudley engaged with communities across New Zealand to uncover key insights.
“I am overwhelmed and overjoyed, as anybody would be if they had their work acknowledged.
“It makes what I do even more precious and exciting.”
Her journey into psychology started more than 30 years ago and she hopes it continues well into the future.
“If my parents were around today they wouldn’t believe this would be possible.
“I am happy with myself for achieving what I have achieved. I wish I had started earlier as there is so much to do.”
Dudley wanted to thank the hundreds of kaumātua from all over the country that she worked with in researching the condition.
Craig Wells King’s Service Medal for services to business and the community
Kaitāia born and bred Craig Wells (Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa, Ngāi Takoto, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kuri, Ngāpuhi) has been able to transfer his business skills to help his community.
Wells’ long list of accolades includes directing the Northland Rugby Union for more than 13 years, serving on the national board for Land Search and Rescue New Zealand and chairing Whakatere ki Koranui Forestry Trust for 10 years.
It is through these roles that Wells has been able to provide better outcomes for both community and business, something he said wouldn’t be possible without the support of his wife Jan or the teams he works with.
Wells said to receive a King’s Service Medal reflected many others doing unseen work in the Far North and across Northland.
“We often just have to get on and do stuff ourselves.”
A fellow of the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, Wells currently provides strategic leadership to Waitangi Ltd while also delivering better outcomes for iwi through his dedicated work for Te Rūnanga O Ngāi Takoto.
That has included developing a horticulture business and designing and constructing a large-scale orchard and market garden which provides work for his community while also supplying free-farm produce to schools, whānau and local foodbanks.
At its height, the initiative put 45,000kg of free food into foodbanks and schools.
Tai Tokerau’s notoriety as an area with deprivation on many levels meant people remained at the forefront, such as providing job security.
“Our focus is people first and everything flows from there,” Wells said.
“It’s difficult to have social change without economic change, you can’t have one without the other, they go hand in hand.”
Ian Peter (Harry) Carter King’s Service Medal for services to Fire and Emergency New Zealand and the community
Portland’s longest-serving volunteer firefighter, Ian Carter – known as Harry – says his farming community’s ethos set him on a lifetime path of helping others.
“I grew up in a small farming community where you helped each other out – that’s just what you did,” the 62-year-old said.
That was the case with his parents especially, who he said never hesitated to pitch in.
“That stuck with me,” Carter said.
The long-time Portland local has a lengthy history of service to his community.
Carter volunteered with the local brigade for 43 years, during which he and fellow firefighter Linda Jarret formed the Portland Cadet Group for kids aged 11 to 16.
The group kept bored youngsters out of mischief and instead taught them valuable life lessons, Carter said.
He joined the brigade at 18, the youngest age they allowed at the time, and was fire chief for three years before stepping back and into the role of station officer.
He was a Portland School board of trustees member for nearly a decade and continues to lend a hand even though his two sons are grown. He recently helped on a school trip to Auckland Zoo.
He is a longstanding member of the Portland Residents and Ratepayers Association, lobbying council and the NZ Transport Agency on behalf of the community.
“If you want to call a place home then you’ve got to do your bit to make it a home,” Carter said.
While he retired from the brigade last year, he said you never truly step away from it.
Carter was grateful for the love and support of his wife Jane – who he met through the brigade – and his sons, who both followed in their dad’s footsteps and became volunteer firefighters.
He thanked his employer of 46 years, Golden Bay Cement, who had supported him since he started work there as a 15-year-old until his retirement this year.
But most importantly, Carter said, the award was for the community, because without their backing he wouldn’t be able to do what he does.
Michael John Dyer (Mike) Camm Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to wildlife conservation
Mike Camm, a leading figure in the successful reintroduction of patiki (brown teal) and kiwi to Northland, says he’s surprised and honoured to be acknowledged for his services to wildlife conservation.
“It’s really good to have this sort of work recognised,” Camm said.
He has been a conservation volunteer for more than 25 years at local, regional and national levels in New Zealand, and is particularly focused on patiki and kiwi.
In 1998 he and his wife bought a 120-hectare property in Tūtūkākā with the aim of recovering the two species there, which they have since achieved.
With the help of the Department of Conservation (DoC), he instigated a predator control system and created a wetland on the property.
In 2003, he established the Tutukaka Landcare Coalition (TLC) and has been its chairman ever since, leading successful reintroductions of pateke and kiwi into a 10,000ha area managed by TLC.
Nowadays the area is professionally trapped and funded by the biodiversity department of the Northland Regional Council (NRC).
Camm’s efforts and success in reintroducing pateke were used as an exemplar in the 2011 DOC Pateke Survival Guide.
That scheme ultimately contributed to the pateke’s status change from Nationally Endangered to Nationally Increasing.
A co-founder and trustee of Kiwi Coast since 2013, Camm has sought to expand and connect conservation throughout Northland.
He was chairman of the organisation from 2021 to 2024.
Kiwi Coast now encompasses more than 225 community groups, iwi and hapū, schools, businesses and government agencies, with secured strategic partnerships and long-term funding.
“As Kiwi Coast chairman I was privileged to see so many of those groups – from the Brynderwyns to the Far North – because it put me in touch with the passion [for conservation] delivered by so many humble New Zealanders,” Camm said.
He is proud that Kiwi Coast’s initiatives, primarily funded by the NRC and Foundation North, have led to the trapping of more than 700,000 pests, a stable Northland population of pateke, and a return of kiwi to previously silent sites.
Camm has been a community representative on the national Pateke Recovery Group since 2013. Gary Raymond Trail Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to martial arts, particularly jiu-jitsu
For the past 50 years, Gary Trail has transformed his childhood fascination with jiu-jitsu into a lifetime dedication.
Trail, 79, began training in judo and jiu-jitsu in 1966 after spotting a poster advertising the arts while travelling through town.
It took only three years before he began his gold medal haul – claiming three in the interclub jiu-jitsu tournament circuit between 1969 and 1971.
He thrives on the challenge of mastering the art’s complexity.
“Jiu-jitsu is very difficult. There are more than 700 techniques in our system [the Kawaishi System],” he said.
Trail graduated with his 1st dan black belt in 1971 and took over management of the New Zealand Judo College – renamed the New Zealand Budo College – in Auckland the following year.
He and two other instructors amalgamated their clubs to re-establish the functions of the ailing New Zealand Jiu-Jitsu Association (NZJJA).
Trail became the association’s president – a role he held for 11 years – and was made a life member in 1985.
He established the Bream Bay Jiu-Jitsu Kai in 1977 and the Far North Jiu-Jitsu Kai in 1986.
Trail was inducted into the New Zealand Martial Arts Hall of Fame in 2002.
In 2006 he was shocked to be inducted in the Australasian Martial Arts Hall of Fame and the World Karate Union Hall of Fame in 2006.
“I was only sixth dan at the time. We don’t usually look to see it awarded to anyone under ninth dan.”
Fourteen years later, Trail was awarded ninth degree (Ku-Dan) in Jiu-Jitsu.
Through his teaching he has produced more than 35 jiu-jitsu black belts.
“In the beginning, I had no idea about my future in the sport but it gradually dawned on me, over the years, what I could achieve,” he said.
Neta Bernadette (Neta Kerepeti) Gilbert King’s Service Medal for services to survivors of abuse in care
Neta Kerepeti (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi, Ngātiwai, Ngāti Mutunga) has worked with survivors of abuse in care to focus on their healing journeys.
Kerepeti was previously co-chair of Te Roopū Toiora Trust – a national collective of survivors of abuse in faith and state-based care.
The trust worked to raise awareness of how their experiences affected their whānau, communities and themselves.
Through Kerepeti’s time with Te Roopū Toiora Trust, where she is now a trustee, she has provided support to survivors of abuse through creative means.
She uses the arts, toi Māori, and other creative pathways to generate awareness of survivor voices and stories.
Kerepeti contributed to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care Institutions.
She helped make recommendations to the inquiry by drawing on her experience of abuse in care and as a social worker with the former Child, Youth and Family Services agency.
More recently, Kerepeti worked alongside the Crown Response Unit as the Taonga Selection Panel chair.
She led a group of survivor creatives to select and guide the design of a taonga to honour survivors of abuse in care.
Richard Marshall Lovelace Bull Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to conservation and the community
Mangawhai farmer Richard Marshall Lovelace Bull has been a community leader in the Kaipara District for 56 years and is a driving force in the development of community assets and amenities.
He has been involved in so many projects that he remembers only some of them when people still thank him for his contributions.
Bull said this honour, which recognises his overall services to conservation and the community, is “very humbling”.
He said he couldn’t have done what he has over the years without his family’s support and “a lot of very good people” alongside him.
“When you’re working with good people, it’s not a big issue – everything goes so well.
“It wasn’t always peaceful – we had some great debates – but that’s what makes a community.”
Bull was significant in the development of the Mangawhai Coastal and Harbour Reserves Management Plan 2009, the blueprint for ongoing maintenance.
In 1994 he was a founding member of the Mangawhai Harbour Restoration Society (MHRS) – a group that supports the restoration and preservation of the harbour’s ecology from sediment build-up, storm and sand-mining damage.
During the 1970s the coastal sandspit on Bull’s farm – about 364ha – was sold to the Government to be managed by the Department of Conservation.
Bull continues to donate his time and machinery to that area, creating sand fencing and replanting native grasses there.
He is proud that during his time as chairman, the MHRS was instrumental in getting rid of sand mining from the Mangawhai Harbour.
The group also supported opposition to sand mining at Pakiri and is now part of a push to keep sand mining out of Bream Bay – Bull has already made three submissions.
He says his community contributions were most intense from the late 1970s through to the early 1990s, when he was:
Post-season monitoring recorded 50 individual tara iti, up from 33 last year.